I've just finished writing an article for the Hub about my 'ARROW' framework, so I thought it probably made sense to talk about it on here too, whilst it's on my mind.
In brief, I put together the ARROW framework/model (call it what you will) to put some structure behind that initial conversation with a customer where they say 'I want a newsletter please' and you think 'that is SO not the right thing to do' and spend the next half an hour trying to convince them otherwise, whilst going an ever more unattractive shade of purple.
In my experience (horrible consultant-type phrase. Please forgive me), things sometimes start to go pear-shaped because either a) comms person is so delivery-focused that they want to deliver what the customer wants at all costs - even if it won't actually make any difference to the business or b) comms person goes into argument mode about why it's the wrong thing to do, when s/he would be better off asking helpful questions about what their customer really wants to achieve.
The ARROW model suggests you ask questions around 5 different areas. You can choose whatever questions make the most sense for the scenario, but I've given some examples here:
A = AIM. Find out what the customer actually wants to achieve. For example:
- That's an interesting idea to put a different Intranet story up every day for the next six months, yes. So, if we were to look ahead to the end of that six months, what would you ideally want people to be feeling and doing differently as a result?
- Are there any specific business results you're hoping this communication will influence? Do you have any specific targets you need to reach?
R = REALITY. Find out what's happening today, so you can establish the gap between the reality and the aim. Example questions:
- And what do people feel/what are they doing today? How do we know?
- What are those business results today? How far away are we from the target?
R = ROADBLOCKS. Establish what could stop you getting from the reality to the aim. E.g:
- What could go wrong?
- What are the one or two biggest potential barriers to us achieving the aim?
O = OPPORTUNITIES. Ask specific questions to narrow down the things that would make the biggest different to achieving the aim. For example:
- If there were just one thing we could manage to get people to do differently in the next six months, what should it be?
W = WHO AND WHEN. You might by now have established these already, but if not ... make sure you know which groups of employees need to do something differently, and whether there are any specific timescales by which things need to be achieved. E.g:
- Are there any specific groups of people we need to target for this aim to be achieved?
- Are there any particular deadlines or milestones we need to work towards?
Hopefully, by this point, you've now gathered enough helpful information to understand what the customer wants and how communication can best contribute towards achieving it. And by working through the questioning process, said customer may have started thinking through in their own mind what they actually want people to do differently, instead of just thinking they need to 'tell everyone about it'.
You also have some helpful information to push back in a more constructive way, using coaching questions. For example, 'So, we need to get our sales up by 50% in the next 6 months - is that right? And the main group we want to target is our field sales force? Do we know what percentage of our field force actually has access to the Intranet? Really? That low ... hmmm ... I wonder if there's another route that might give us a better result - what do you think?'
That's a very condensed version, but I hope you get the gist, and I'd be interested to know whether you find the idea helpful. I called it the ARROW model, by the way, because the idea of it is, in the nicest possible way, to decipher 'what's the point' behind the communication you're being asked to deliver.
Sue







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